


Action Items, Next Steps, and Then Adjourn

by Kathar



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: And Clint, BAMF Phil Coulson, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Even Agent Coulson Gets the Blues, Extreme Bureaucratic Aggravation/Comfort, Getting Together, He gets Clint too, M/M, Pre-Canon, footrubs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23706520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathar/pseuds/Kathar
Summary: It's not that Phil Coulson isn't pleased with his promotion. Yes, he was taken away from Strike Team Delta, and yes he's out of the field now, and okay there are an awful lot of meetings. But he's working directly for the Director, doing work only only he can be trusted to do right.If only there weren't so much of it, and it didn't involve so very many deeplystupidpeople.And if only he weren't missing Clint (and Natasha) so much....
Relationships: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Comments: 91
Kudos: 303





	Action Items, Next Steps, and Then Adjourn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laurakaye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/gifts).



> Sometimes, writers have terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad weeks. Or months. And sometimes our betas do, too. And sometimes that leads to fic. Because if we can't project onto Phil Coulson, what are we even doing here?
> 
> Thanks and more thanks to LauraKaye for the beta-- and as always, all my love.

“Wow, Coulson, you need a shoe shine after how far you stuck your boot up the General's ass?”

Phil stopped mid-stride and blinked at Jasper Sitwell, a little startled by the comment.

“Did I sound curt to you? I was going for frostily polite-- hell!” He barely caught the door before it slammed into his nose.  _ Then _ he barely managed to dodge before Jasper himself slammed into him. Jasper had apparently expected him to keep on moving through the door and let it go-- then dove after it when he realized Phil’d halted.

It was pretty much indicative of how Phil’s entire day had been going, if he was honest with himself. After righting himself and letting Phil all the way through the conference room door, Jasper shook his head.

“You kidding? You  _ killed _ it. Never seen a guy take a leather upper enema that far up and  _ like _ it before. He even made your argument for you to the WSC, there at the end. I had no idea they’d dredge up that old shit from Ipanema-- you going up or down?”

They’d reached the elevators now, walking at a pace that was brisk even for two senior SHIELD agents. Phil had set it-- largely because he felt like he was going to fall over if he slowed down. Momentum. That was the ticket. Maybe he should take the stairs?

No. The stairs had recently been the site of not one, not two, but  _ three _ OSHA-recordable accidents, which was why he’d been asked to sit in on the lastest safety committee meeting on behalf of AD Hill.

Best not take the stairs.

“Up,” he said, because down meant the cafeteria, and he needed somewhere to hide for a minute. Or three. And just… breathe. Or scream. Or something. 

“You want to know how I knew they’d bring up Ipanema?” he asked Jasper as they waited for the elevators to grind closer. “I just asked myself ‘what’s the stupidest thing they could ask about.’ The way my week’s been going, I figured that was what I should expect.”

Then he whisked himself into the up elevator, and waved at Jasper as the doors closed. 

…

They opened, unfortunately, on Agent Felix Blake, who was standing in the elevator lobby looking vaguely pissed. Well-- vaguely more pissed than usual.

“You seen Barton?” he asked Phil abruptly.

“Nope,” Phil told him, trying not to break stride. Slowing down could be fatal. 

“He’s probably in the vents again,” Blake growled after him.

“Can’t fit in ‘em,” Phil called over his shoulder as he headed rapidly down the passage. 

Even if he hadn’t already been in a homicidal mood, having Blake nattering on at him about his problems with Agent Barton would have made him consider the merits of a little light stabbing. Blake wasn’t a bad agent, but he and Barton had gotten off on the wrong foot. Or rather-- Barton had accidentally dropped a piano (just the edge of it)  _ on _ Blake’s foot. Ever since, Blake had been like  _ this _ about him. Phil’d tried several times to intercede; now, he just tried to go out-bland Blake. It usually worked.

Usually. Phil checked the reflection in the glass walls he was passing and found that Blake was, most unfortunately, following him. He was still staring overhead-- presumably looking for tremors in the hidden ductwork.

“His debrief on Kerala was sorely lacking,” Blake continued, catching up to Phil. “I had follow-ups for him. How does he even get up there?”

“He doesn’t,” Phil replied, though it was a lost cause. 

Somehow, a full half of SHIELD seemed to think Barton habitually took to the ductwork when he wanted to be alone. How they thought he could get his shoulders into the vents was beyond Phil. They were far, far too broad. And shapely. And-- well. Phil’d seen Barton get in and out of a lot of improbably tight spots, but a hamster he was not. He had clavicles. 

“Probably halfway across the building by now. Maybe down in R&D. I’ll have someone put a watch on the range down in the sub basement, just in case. Swear to god, you can never find him when you need him.”

Phil could pretty much always find Clint Barton when he needed him, but decided not to tell Blake that. Barton had gotten back from his mission fairly late on Wednesday, and been in debriefs much of the day yesterday-- or so he’d heard. He hadn’t actually gotten to check in with Strike Team Delta for more than a couple minutes. (Technically, he didn’t  _ need _ to. But ever since Fury’d promoted him to special projects last year, he’d felt twitchy. Too little field time. Natasha and Clint, the two remaining thirds of Strike Team Delta, generously let him worry about them still. Just to keep his hand in.)

“Well, wherever he is, he’s not in the vents.” Phil sped up as they rounded a corner, then kept going. His office was on in this wing-- he thought. No, yes, it was; he recognized the drooping ficus by the conference room door. That would do for screaming. Even better-- he had a couch. A stiff, second-hand one scrounged from the re-model of a waiting room near medical, but it was more private than the agent-on-duty bunks when he ended up spending the night. Even five minutes of shut-eye sounded like bliss.

“Hah. You don’t know where he goes any better than I do,” Blake called after him, clearly not willing to trot to keep up. 

This, Phil had to admit, he did not. And, back to the wall, he might even admit it bugged him a little. 

Though he had no way of knowing it at that moment, he was about to find out.

…

Phil let himself into his office hastily, before anyone else could accost him, already shucking off his jacket as he went. Without bothering to turn on the lights, he flung his door shut, flung his jacket over the visitor’s chair, and flung himself onto his couch.

“Oof,” said the couch.

Phil bounced right back up, and blinked in confusion.

“What are you doing on my couch, Barton?” he asked.

“Napping. What were you doing on my  _ lap _ ?” Clint replied, sounding more amused than offended. Clint very, very rarely sounded offended, at least to Phil, so it was nice to know that accidentally flopping on the man also didn’t phase him.

“Trying to nap. Sorry. Uh-- Blake was looking for you.”

“I know. ‘S why I’m here. Um, I can go, if you want to sleep? Sounds like you’ve had a rough week.” Clint half-made to get up, his eyes going all wide with concern. His hair was a little wild, smooshed down on one side from his nap, and all his edges seemed softer in the muted daylight that drifted through the window blinds. 

“You could say that, yeah,” Phil said, ignoring Clint’s offer and plopping down on the other side of the couch. He didn’t feel tired, all of a sudden, and it’d be a shame to ask Clint to move. “It’d be an understatement, but you could say that. How’d you know, anyway?”

“Your check-in with us was all of five minutes. That’s never a good sign. Oh-- and Nat hacked your calendar. Thought you had a meeting in five, by the way?”

“Cancelled. But I do have one in thirty-five. Came back to try and knock this headache out.” Something in Phil warmed at the idea that Clint had noticed how off he was. But then, Clint always did-- and lately he’d got more direct about telling Phil so, rather than trying to compensate for his bad moods. It was… refreshing. He hated seeing Clint hide. Speaking of which: “Blake thought you were in the vents.”

“Again?” Clint laughed. “I thought SHIELD was supposed to hire tactical geniuses. Do they think I‘ve got, like, hamster DNA or something? I have clavicles!” 

He thumped his chest to demonstrate, and Phil cut off what he was about to say-- “exactly!”-- in favor of laughing. It didn’t hurt half as much as he’d have expected, the laughter. If anything, when he stopped the skin around his eyes felt less drawn. 

“Where  _ do _ you end up, though?” he asked, still half-chuckling. 

Clint blinked at him, and pointed at the floor. Was-- did he mean downstairs? Or-- 

Actually.

He’d looked  _ awfully _ comfy there on the couch.

“Here?”

“You said I could come by if I needed to,” Clint shrugged, his face starting to shutter a little.

“No-- yeah, of course! Just-- all this time?”

Clint had been disappearing for  _ years _ \-- nearly the entirety of the time they’d been Strike Team Delta. Which, Phil now realized, coincided with him getting an office of his own.

“Yep.” Clint popped the  _ p _ on the end, looking amused.

“How the hell did I not notice?”

“You’re in your own office for like a half hour a day, Phil. Only reason I know you're even in it that much is the hieroglyphics change." He waved at Phil's whiteboard, which was currently covered with swim lanes in four colors for a process flow whose end product Phil had completely forgotten. 

He'd completely forgotten it for the same reason he currently had a headache: the absurd preponderance of meetings on his schedule. 

“I concede the point,” he told Clint. “If not the couch.”

Clint laughed, starting to relax back into the seat now that he realized Phil was just astonished, not alarmed. Which was good-- Phil hated alarming him. Not that he thought Clint would hurt him-- not ever-- but there was too much else in the world to be alarmed about, especially for a high-level specialist like Clint. And  _ doubly _ especially for one who, also like Clint, worked largely without support. Phil had never wanted to add to it.

“Fair’s fair,” Clint said. “Look, I can scootch over so you can lay down,” 

He suited his actions to his words before Phil could protest and lie that he didn’t  _ need _ to lay down. So, feeling a little silly, lay down Phil did, propping his head on the low arm of the couch and folding his legs up in the middle, so his toes didn’t quite touch Clint’s thigh. He looked up at his own ceiling, and sighed.

“Wanna talk about it, or wanna forget about it?” Clint asked him lightly.

“Not much to talk about,” Phil grumbled, settling in. Damn couch was getting saggy in the middle-- though maybe now he knew why. Must be Clint’s a… er, hips, digging in whenever he slept on it. Which wasn’t a mental image that was going to help him  _ calm down _ .

“Well, if you wanna forget about it, I’ll try to help with that, too,” Clint told him-- with maybe just a shade of disappointment? 

He rubbed his temples and considered Clint’s offer more seriously. Jasper had asked him that, too, yesterday-- or was it the day before? And Phil’d just gotten up a good head of steam when he’d noticed Jasper’s eyes start to glaze over. Couldn’t blame him-- Phil’s weeks had used to go wrong in much more exciting fashions, back when he was in the field with Clint and Natasha.  _ Strike Team Steamroller _ , Jasper had used to call them, because when they got going,  _ nothing _ could stop them-- not even their superiors at SHIELD. That was what Jasper was used to; he hadn’t signed up to listen to Phil moan about a schedule full of meetings-- and Phil was getting tired of having to constantly explain why meetings were important too.

“It was just a normal shitty week, nothing that exciting about it, Clint. No… running gunfights through the market square or failing parachutes over the Bosporus.”

“Okay, it didn’t fail, though, you just forgot to put it on,” Clint told him, laughing-- which he could do, at the distance of several years. He’d been more than a little freaked out at the time.

“There was a  _ lot going on _ ,” Phil laughed back at him, as if he hadn’t been a  _ lot _ freaked out at the time. “As for this week, I don’t know where I’d even begin.” 

Actually, he did  _ kind _ of know where he’d begin. If he were going to talk about it. Which he wasn’t.

At all.

Despite the heart-tuggingly curious and encouraging look Clint was giving him at the moment.

“It’s not-- it’s really not going to interest you.”

“If you’re telling me about it, I’m going to be interested.” Clint said firmly. “But, I get it if you--”

“I mean, I should have known it would be bad when the first thing I saw in my inbox Monday morning was an announcement from the Secretary of Defense about new joint ops guidance,” Phil said-- and then grimaced when he realized he’d somehow begun anyway. 

Clint grimaced too-- but in sympathy at the paperwork, not at Phil’s sudden verbal incontinence. Phil considered him. They’d been used to each other long enough Clint probably had  _ some _ idea what he was in for. And it wasn’t going to lower him in Clint’s opinion, if he vented a  _ little _ \-- Clint had seen him far, far more compromised. As long as he didn’t get carried away enough to scare Clint off, maybe it’d be alright.

“I know-- I know it doesn’t sound like much, but  _ you _ know what a fucking pain those are to comb through. Two-hundred eighty pages of pure bureaucratic bullshit pulled from the asshole of the devil himself. And I was pre-caffeine at the time, too.”

“Yeah I remember the way you when they were re-doing the STRIKE team SOP. I know it sucks, but you’re the one that caught how they would’ve fucked over any field CO who called STRIKE in. So. I get why they gave it to you. Anyway, don’t you usually have at least sixteen ounces of diesel on board by the time you hit the inbox?”

“I--”

Phil stared at Clint, his brain stuttering to a half. He’d had a whole spiel ready to explain why it wasn’t  _ just red tape _ and why  _ he _ was the only one who could-- he hadn’t expected Clint there before him. 

Though, on reflection, Clint was often many places before him, it was one of the amazing things about working with Clint. And Natasha, of course.

“Yeah,” he said, trying to pick up the thread, “I usually get coffee at home but the carafe on my french press broke. Then the line at the coffee shop was out the door, so I held out for work, and only then realized I didn’t have change for the coffee club on the fourth floor.” 

“Ouch,” Clint said, giving a sympathetic pat to Phil’s calf. Phil felt himself relax just a little bit more, and tried not to feel pathetic about it.

“I guess in hindsight,  _ that’s _ when I should have known it was going to be a bad week,” he continued, watching Clint out of the corner of his eye for signs of nascent boredom. “But yeah-- the guidance. Which of course I had to send around to the directors--  _ and _ the assistant directors, because the directors are never gonna read it--  _ and _ the regional directors, because the assistant directors are never going to read it. And then I ended up with two meetings on the schedule for it  _ and  _ a webinar with the DoD because I don’t have enough angst in my life already.” 

“No one deserves a DOD webinar,” Clint said sagely. “HR should, like, institute mandatory therapy for anyone stuck with one. You’d just come off one of those when we got sent to Quito, and look what happened there.”

“I’d hoped you’d forgotten Quito.”

“Oh no, I’m gonna remember Quito ‘till my dying day. Poor town never knew what hit it.”

Phil winced, screwing his eyes shut as if he could somehow blind himself to his own past poor behavior. 

“I am not proud of Quito,” he said, not sure if he was trying to reassure Clint or himself more. “I try not to lose control--”

“I know you do,” Clint broke in. “That’s what makes it so spectacular when it happens. Phil, it’s fine. You were fine. Even the llamas were fine, in the end. It was just… a really different view of you. Probably when I realized you were an actual person. I mean-- as in not just an agent. Not as in I’d thought you were a robot.”

“When I’m at work, I  _ am _ an agent,” Phil argued, though he wasn’t sure why. Something in his belly had twisted happily at the fondness in Clint’s voice. “Being a person can wait ‘till I’m at home. Ugh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be taking any of this out on you. You’re probably still turned around from Kerala. I should let you nap.”

“Fuck that.” Clint’s voice was far lighter than his words, and Phil opened his eyes long enough to check his face-- he looked half mad, half amused. And hard to look directly at, for some reason. “You can be a person with me-- and Nat. I-- we--  _ like _ it when you’re an actual person. Vent at me. I’m here. I’m not gonna think less of you. Lay it on me. And, actually-- here, give me your legs.”

“I-- okay,” Phil said, a little confused but not about to argue with anything Clint asked of him. Especially not when he was still trying to fight down a blush at being liked as an actual person by Clint. 

He’d been turning a Clint Problem-- well, a Clint and Natasha Problem-- around in his head for the past several months. A How To Keep Them In My Life sort of problem. Checking in on their debriefs, having lunch together on the rare occasions he could spare fifteen minutes, texting during slow meetings-- none of it was quite enough. It felt like they were slipping away from him bit by bit. So if Clint was saying he maybe could be convinced to be… regular friends? That sounded… really nice, actually. 

And if he wanted Phil to give him his calves, Phil was going to just do that and not ask questions. Also:

“I don’t really need to vent much, honestly. I’m feeling better just seeing your face. It’s fine. I’m fine. It was just everything piling up at once. And everything’s sister. And everything’s cousin’s aunt. Just-- I started this week with a schedule. And a task list. And now I have a disaster zone. FEMA should bring in the insurance adjusters. Can you believe I was in Marrakech this week? Because I can’t. All I saw was the landing strip, the secure hotel, and the SHIELD installations there. In  _ Marrakech _ ! I’ve always  _ wanted _ to visit Marrakech, you know I have--” 

Clint nodded that yes, he did, and finished re-arranging Phil’s feet on his lap, so that Phil could stretch out full-length on the couch. 

“-- and insult to injury, I was only there because the on-site staff had somehow managed to run afoul of someone in the Ministry of Youth and Sports--”

“ _ How? _ ” Clint asked, looking just as confounded as Phil had at the time.

“Don’t ask. It’s eyes-only at this point. It was absurd, but they fucking managed it, and having made the hole they  _ kept on digging.  _ By the time I got there we nearly had an international incident on our hands.”

“We don’t have people for that?” Clint asked, sounding dubious.

“We do-- they were  _ right down in the hole _ and digging with the area head. So  _ anyway _ , in a normal week that would have been frustrating but handleable. But I already had that guidance to coordinate, was in the middle of helping the Director stand up a new inter-division task force over on the west coast-- and by ‘helping the Director’ I mean Nick stood me up last minute for something at the Pentagon and left me to do the kick-off, and I’m not nearly as impressive-- and I was trying to prep for the meeting today with the WSC and some generals out of NATO and the Pentagon. Which, let me tell you, was--” 

_ Gurgle _ , went his belly, loud enough to interrupt even Phil’s increasingly-derailed train of thought. He tilted his head up far enough to glare down at it. A quaking under his feet told him Clint was laughing at him; he didn’t dare look up to check. 

“Sorry, forgot to eat today. Well. Not  _ forgot _ . I  _ tried _ to eat today, but all I had time for was a cup-o-soup, and it kept dribbling on my tie, so I had to dump it.”

“Jeez, sounds like you can’t catch a break. Here.”

A protein bar slid into his vision, dangled from two of Clint’s long, knobby fingers. Phil didn’t even try to protest. He didn’t think it would be believed. Anyway, Clint wouldn’t have offered if he didn’t mean it, and he was always generous with his snack stash, whipping out protein bars at the least sign of peckishness. At least-- he was generous with Phil. And Natasha, of course. After the disaster that had ensued the first time he tried to politely refuse, Phil had changed tactics and just tried to project a general gratefulness. He ripped the top of the wrapper off with his teeth, and continued.

“Anyway…” he munched on the protein bar as he described the meeting he’d just finished, and maybe it was finally having something in his belly, or maybe it was the sympathetic/impressed sounds Clint was making, but the tension he’d been holding through the whole thing finally started to bleed away. It’d been a low-stakes subject but a high-stakes meeting, a whole camel’s nose situation where the actual ask was small but would’ve quickly bloomed into the WSC trying to upend a couple decades of settled procedure if he hadn’t won his point. His stomach had been in knots the whole morning, which partly explained the no-eating thing. 

Clint might not have been able to understand the politics at play, but he’d always been able to understand when things were important to Phil.

“So let me guess,” Clint said, when Phil stopped momentarily, distracted by the fact that Clint had started unlacing his shoes, “the WSC brought up the stupidest thing they could possibly bring up?”

“Ipanema,” Phil groaned, and watched as his shoes were removed and set carefully on the floor. Made sense; he wouldn’t have wanted dirty shoes on his trousers, and Clint was actually a lot neater than he was given credit for. “They brought up Ipanema. I don’t think you had to deal with that--”

“No, but I very clearly recall  _ you _ dealing with that,” Clint said, tugging at the toe of one of Phil’s socks. “And it was stupid. So of course they brought it up. And after you’d already gone through and explained  _ why _ it would be stupid.”

“No, but that actually worked out in my favor. Apparently something I’d said got through General Mercier’s thick skull, because  _ he _ argued the WSC out of it, using my own language from earlier.”

Both socks were off now, and Phil flexed his toes absently in the cool air. Clint’s hands were warm and solid on them. Secure. Stable. Just like his laughter, which was coming out low and genuine.

“That’s the Agent Coulson I l… remember. A black belt in the art of meeting ju jitsu. I’m guessing the WSC couldn’t argue back when it was coming from the Pentagon, not you?”

“Yes, that was convenient,” Phil agreed, wriggling himself into a slightly more comfortable position on the cushions. Actually, now that the adrenaline rush from the meeting was starting to wear off and lethargy was setting in, he had to admit the outcome had been more than satisfactory. It was always hard to tell in the moment. “I guess the one silver lining this week is I’ve made it all  _ work _ . It’s just been everything, all at once.”

“Sounds like it,” Clint said. “Having a hard time ramping down?”

“Haven’t had  _ time _ to ramp down-- well. I’ve been telling you. Maybe this weekend, if I’m not called out to Djibouti or someplace equally improbable, I can sleep in or… or something. I’m not even sure I know  _ how _ to relax right now. And I’m so tired of figuring out logistics; I need a big game show wheel with options or something.”

“What, like ‘dinner,’ ‘go hiking,’ ‘take a nap,’ ‘do cocaine,’ that kind of thing?”

Phil snorted.

“Yes, that kind of thing. You know what I like best about you, Clint?”

“What?” Clint asked, amusement still riding in his voice.

Phil let his eyes drift half-closed, enjoying the sound. 

“I never have to explain with you, the way I do with… anyone else. It’s fucking restful.”

“ _ I’m _ restful? Phil?”

“Yuh-huh. It’s frustrating finding words, sometimes. I miss you-- you and Nat. No one seems to know what I’m going for unless I stop to diagram it or do flow maps or something, anymore.”

“Now that is a tragedy,” Clint told him, re-settling him a little. Phil’s eyes were fully closed now, his body all the way relaxed into the couch, muscles starting to un-knot. “Bad enough they took you away from m… us… but someone at least ought to  _ appreciate _ you properly.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, Fury  _ appreciates _ me all right. Had me sit in for him in at  _ least _ three other meetings this week, and I know that should be flattering but it’s  _ not _ . One of them was the safety committee, and-- oh, that reminds me, maybe don’t take the stairs over in the east wing. At all. Ever. Anyway-- it just took up time I didn’t have, and then I had not one, not two, but  _ three _ questions about policies that SHIELD implemented twenty years ago and I am not sure who decided I looked like the archivist. I am  _ not _ . I just-- wait,” Phil stopped in the middle of his sentence and looked up at Clint. “Are you… rubbing my feet?”

He wasn’t sure why he was asking, given that his toes were currently bare and being rolled in between Clint’s strong fingers.  _ Clint _ didn’t seem too sure why he was asking, either, given the  _ are you serious _ look he gave Phil, all raised eyebrows and unimpressed mouth.

“What do you think?” he asked, running a thumb down the arch of Phil’s foot-- which  _ didn’t  _ tickle at all it really didn’t. He was just arching his leg and back and whole body because he wanted to stretch. 

“Okay but,” Phil said, trying to settle himself back down, “ _ why _ are you rubbing my feet?”

“Because you were having a tough week and it sounded like someone  _ should _ give you a foot rub, and I was here and so were your feet?” He set Phil’s feet down on his thighs, and covered them over with his big palms, just lying there, providing weight and comfort. 

“That’s…”  _ nice _ , Phil struggled to say. Or maybe,  _ confusing _ , or maybe,  _ almost too much and I might either cry or throw myself at you and I don’t think I’d survive the mortification that would follow either one.  _ While he was still struggling, Clint shrugged and went on, looking down at Phil’s callouses as he talked.

“... And anyway it was either this or maybe take you out for a drink so you could rant more but you tend to avoid booze when you’re in this kind of mood? And I wasn’t sure you could leave work yet either, so….”

Phil was dimly aware his breath had stopped at  _ take you out for a drink _ . It sounded, somehow, indefinably different than  _ grab beers _ or  _ hit the bar _ or any of the other ways they’d consumed alcohol in each others’ company over the years. In fact, it almost sounded like…. 

“What, like a date?” Phil blurted out, because apparently he’d overused his brain-mouth filter and it had gotten holes.  _ Large _ ones. Ones you could shove your foot into your mouth through.

Clint blushed.

He  _ blushed _ . And his hands convulsed on Phil’s feet, once.

Phil opened his mouth to apologize, but couldn’t get a word out. Because Clint had just muttered-- he was pretty sure, unless he’d reached the point of exhaustion where the aural hallucinations started-- “If you want it to be.”

“I--” Phil started. But that was all he got out. The many, many possibilities inherent in Clint’s confession had just clogged up his brain and he was at a loss how to process them all. His eyes were bulging, he was sure, and he knew his mouth was still hanging open. But that was the least of his problems.

“I mean, only if you want,” Clint rushed-- as if  _ that _ were the problem. As if anyone, ever, could have met Clint, gotten to know him, gotten a  _ foot rub _ from him, and not  _ want  _ him _. _ “It can just be friendly, if that's what you want. I’m easy. I mean-- cool. I’m cool either way. You know.” He shrugged. His hands still hadn’t left Phil’s feet.

“I-- no, I’m not, I’m just--” Phil dragged his hands through his hair, tugging hard, hoping he could pull the words out. “I don’t think my brain is capable of handling something  _ good _ happening right now. Gimme a second here to regroup and process. There are… are things, I’m sure. Angles. That we-- that I-- would need to, uh, consider.”

Clint had perked up at  _ something good, _ then his face had twisted at the rest of Phil’s speech. 

“Well, no pressure, Phil. Except on your heel. And arch. Maybe if we’re lucky I can find a pressure point that will jump start your brain.”

And he went back to rubbing.

It was really  _ convincing _ rubbing. Phil wasn’t sure it was making his brain work again but  _ something _ was definitely beginning to wake up. Clint started to sweep ankleward with firm strokes, then over the ankle and up under the hem of Phil’s pants leg and no, yeah, even if it had never occurred to Phil to desire Clint before, a dead man would have reacted to  _ that _ . His hands had never been less than a miracle.

But desire for Clint was an old familiar thing. The concept of  _ mutual _ desire was a lot harder to process. And  _ dating?  _ A  _ relationship?  _ Good God.

“You know I always thought you were, um,” Phil waved his hands at Clint’s… everything… in lieu of trying to find a word that encompassed his Clint-ness. It ended up in a kind of  _ va-va-voom _ gesture that pulled a startled, almost shy, laugh out of Clint (as if it wasn’t 100% accurate). Phil had to clear his throat before going on. “I just hadn’t considered the possibility of you-- of  _ us.  _ That way. It’s… definitely intriguing. I mean-- god, Clint. Wow. But I’d have to… I’d have to check HR regs, I’d have to consider--”

“Nothing in the HR regs says we can’t,” Clint interrupted him. “If we stick with it we’d need to tell our supervisors and shit like that, but we’re close enough to equal and not in each others’ reporting line.”

“Wait, you read the regs?” Phil asked, blinking.  _ For me?  _

Clint’s face conveyed his low opinion of that question, which Phil thought was a little unfair. Clint was in many ways-- in all the important ways-- a superlative SHIELD agent. But  _ reading the regs _ was not on the list. He’d once told Phil he figured if they were important enough, someone would either tell him about them, or else yell at him after he broke one. 

“Well I couldn’t ask you,” he said shrugging. “And it’s not like I was going to ask Blake or Sitwell or May or anybody. So like I said, it’s not like we’d have to say anything  _ yet _ . We’ve got time.”

“I don’t usually, actually,” Phil told him apologetically. “Have time, I mean. For dating. This is-- well, you know my schedule.”

It was not a schedule at all conducive to keeping dates on a regular basis, which was one reason why as Strike Team Delta had heated up, Phil's love life had gone cold. (Of course, it was very possible that Clint was the other big reason Phil’d stopped looking.) 

“I  _ do _ know your schedule,” Clint replied, deliberately. “And you know mine. I took your schedule into account before I put your feet up on my lap. Look, Phil.” He dropped Phil’s feet, leaned over, and wrapped his arms around them in the process of leaning on his elbows. It ended up a kind of half-hug situation. “You not being on Delta anymore got me thinking, ‘cause I get why it’s important, and honestly you deserve all the big-name big-issue stuff you’re doing now. But I resented it a lot at first, ‘till it finally hit me. What I really didn’t like was not being able to do  _ this _ .”

“... This?” Phil asked.

“Yeah. This thing we’re doing right now. This thing where we talk, and I see you and it… it makes me feel better.”

“Just… talking to me?” Phil asked. He’d tried so hard over the years to make Clint happy, keep him whole, healthy, content, mission-ready, sane-- the idea of it being as easy as just…  _ existing _ around Clint was almost as mind-boggling as the idea of a date with him. “That’s all it takes?”

That won him a very impatient eyebrow, though Clint still seemed mostly amused.

“You really are processing slow today. Phil, yeah, just talking. Just… anything you do, really. I  _ like _ you. Like… in a whole lot of ways. I kinda figured you might like me, too, maybe. And I just-- I really want to do something to help  _ you _ feel better, okay?”

“I  _ do _ like you too,” Phil told him, kind of helplessly. “But if what you want is to make me feel better, Clint-- you do that just by listening. You don’t have to do anything else.”

“Yeah,” Clint agreed, and looked up at Phil with danger in his eyes and a half-smile pulling his lips. “But my way has orgasms involved.”

That was by far the most convincing point Phil’d heard in days. Also, certain parts of his body were seconding Clint’s suggestion enthusiastically enough it could probably be seen from some spy satellites, so he was pretty sure he’d just lost the argument. If it had been an argument.

Clint just chuckled, and went back to rubbing Phil’s feet, waiting for Phil’s brain to come back from space.

“Okay,” Phil told him. “I can’t really handle a beer tonight, it’ll just mix me up-- but I _ would _ be up for dinner with you. Th-- actually.” He stopped dead, and a little breathless, as a thought occurred to him. “Are you… talking date-date or more of a, um, friends with benefits thing?” 

Either, technically, would solve his How To Keep Clint In My Life problem (though not the Natasha Problem), but now that he’d started wandering down the mental path of romance rather than friendship, Phil had preferences. Very  _ firm _ preferences, despite the fact that they hadn’t even been on his radar five minutes ago.

Clint’s blush came on so suddenly he ended up looking like a chameleon who was bad at camouflage. He focused hard on the space between Phil’s big toes.

“Ideally a date-date? I mean… again, if you want. We don’t have to decide today, even, if--” 

“Oh no, it’s absolutely a date-date. You can meet me at la Corvina at eight.” Phil said firmly, feeling his heart unclench. After all, Clint had been camping in his office when he needed a place to hide, he’d listened to Phil vomit out all the pent-up frustration of the past week, and he had  _ great _ accupressure technique for an amateur. Again, what kind of idiot  _ wouldn’t _ want all of that in his life? “But for now--”

“For now?” Clint asked, taking his hands off Phil’s feet and sitting back like he thought he already knew the answer. He seemed caught, unsure whether to grin at Phil’s acceptance or frown at the loss of feet.

“For now,” Phil told him, solemnly as he could, “I’m going to just lie back down here and try to nap for five. Don’t feel you have to leave on my account.”

He wiggled his toes.

Clint’s rusty, delighted chuckle chased him down into darkness, and Clint’s hands got back to work. Phil drifted, not really sleeping, trying hard to just enjoy the moment.

( _ Date!  _ He had a  _ date!  _ With  _ Clint! _ Who’d said “ _ orgasms _ !” About  _ them! _ Their two selves!)

After a while, he felt Clint shift, and then a soft touch on the tip of his big toe, like someone had kissed him there. It was the best thing he’d felt all week, and he opened his mouth to tell Clint so.

Only his door flew open and Jasper burst in before he could.

\---

“Hey, Coulson, sorry to-- oh.”

Jasper stopped dead in the doorway, eyes wide and blinking behind his ridiculous wire-rims.

“Sitwell?” Phil prompted him after a minute, having decided that moving his feet off Clint would be much more incriminating than just lying still and looking nonchalant. 

“You-- sorry, I was just.” Jasper shook his head impatiently, like he was trying to knock a gnat out of his ear. “Barton, Blake was looking for you. Something about follow-up questions on Kerala?”

“Tell him I’m in the vents,” Clint said, folding his hands primly over Phil’s ankles. His face was blank, but Phil could feel the hesitation in his touch, and risked reaching out with one toe to give Clint’s thigh a minute stroke. Clint’s hands settled more firmly on his legs, and Phil turned his attention back to Jasper.

“I have a meeting in five,” he told Jasper. “What do you need?”

Jasper pulled himself together, and re-focused on Phil’s face. Something in the pit of Phil’s stomach started sinking.

“That meeting’s been rescheduled to tomorrow at three. WSC was so impressed with your expertise on our last call that they want you in a meeting over at the International Monetary Fund to explain it to  _ them _ too. Starts in an hour.”

And there it was. His terrible week, taking one last opportunity to put the screws in.

“Ugh,” Phil sighed. “They would. Well, I’ll go talk to Nick. He’s not going to want us getting involved with the IMF.”

“Fury’s the one who told me to find you,” Jasper said, wrinkling his nose in sympathy. “I’m sorry, Phil. I tried to play dumb, pretend I didn’t know where you were. He didn’t buy it.”

“Should’ve told him  _ I _ was in the vents,” Phil groused. It earned a low, rough laugh from Clint-- which  _ nearly _ made up for the aggravation. “Fine, fine.Getting over there at rush hour is going to be a pain, though. Do me a favor and sign me out a fleet vehicle while I wrap things up here?”

Jasper nodded, and left-- very pointedly not looking at Clint, his lap, or Phil’s feet as he did.

“Do you think he’ll tell Blake where I am?” Clint asked, sounding suspiciously bright. 

Phil looked over at him, expecting to see… he wasn’t sure what. Disappointment being covered up with a game face? Frustration at Jasper? At  _ Phil _ ? It was one thing to say he was okay with Phil's insane schedule, but having it mess up your plans  _ five minutes later…. _

What he  _ did _ see was just Clint, looking at him with the same half-amused half-fond face he’d been looking at Phil with for ages. 

“I really miss you,” Phil told him, though it didn’t make much sense in context.

Clint just chuckled some more, and rubbed his palms reassuringly up and down Phil’s calves. 

“Well, we’ll take care of that later. You still on for tonight, or does this change plans?”

“I am  _ absolutely _ still on for tonight,” Phil growled. “The only way I’m going to get through this meeting without murdering someone-- possibly myself-- is knowing I'll miss our date if I'm in a holding cell.”

“You wouldn’t murder anyone anyway,” Clint told him comfortably. “Except maybe with words.  _ God _ , Phil, I miss being in meetings with you. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but your meeting voice is improbably sexy.”

“I.” 

Phil blinked, shook his head, and tried again.

“That’s.”

No; there wasn’t really anything he could  _ say _ to something like that. Eventually Clint, laughing, took pity on him.

“You need to get ready-- and  _ I _ need to get out of here before Blake finds me. I’m gonna go home and grab a nap there. Should be on stand-down anyway, screw Blake. See you at eight at la Corvina?”

“Yes,” Phil told him, trying to convey with just his voice just how much he meant it. “Eight at la Corvina. Count on it.”

\--

At nine, Phil knocked on Clint’s apartment door. He was pissed off, there was a sour taste in his mouth left over from the adrenaline crash, and he wasn’t sure why he had even  _ come _ except Clint had said to. At least he could apologize in person. That would hopefully go over a little better than a text.

Clint was notoriously forgiving about these things--  _ far _ more forgiving than the people he forgave deserved, in Phil’s opinion. (Clint’s opinion, the couple times they’d argued about it, was that it was way too damn much work to bear a grudge and anyways it made his skin crawl to be out of sorts with people he liked.) But Clint  _ was _ going to be disappointed-- anyone in their right mind would be-- and Phil just hoped he--

“Aw you  _ are _ alive!” 

In anyone else it would’ve been sarcastic; from Clint it was just warm. So were his arms, as he threw them around Phil and pulled him into his apartment-- and into a hug. He closed the door behind Phil with a kick, then pulled back to give Phil a once-over.

“Alive, but really mad,” he amended.

“I’m not mad,” Phil told him. “Well-- I  _ am _ mad, but at other people. Myself, maybe. I’m sorry, Clint, I know you wanted that date.  _ I _ wanted that date. There was just-- well, it’s no excuse, but--”

“But there was some kind of active shooter scare near the Mexican Embassy,” Clint interrupted. “I know, I heard. Sounds like it snarled traffic pretty bad. It was actually a bunch of film students doing a project or something?”

“It was,” Phil sighed, feeling irritation trying to rise up at the memory and fail. He was too drained-- and too pleased to be in Clint’s arms. “Of course, no one told us that.”

“No one-- what?” Clint asked, stopping dead in the middle of leading Phil over to his couch. “You thought there was a real live shooter across the street? What the fuck?”

“Oh no, it gets worse.” Phil headed for the couch; he was going to collapse soon, and since Clint didn’t seem inclined to kick him out-- for a miracle-- he needed to get off his feet. Clint’s couch was wide, worn, and welcoming, covered in balled-up throws and pillows. It’d be an excellent place from which to spill out his story; maybe it’d even help him recreate some of the cozy solace he’d found that afternoon on his office couch with Clint. Would this one have the same sag in the middle from Clint’s hips? He was about to find out.

“Worse?” Clint asked skeptically, as Phil threw himself down.

He promptly bounced right up again, as the lump of blanket upon which he’d thrown himself heaved. 

“Woof,” said the blanket, then it shuddered and fell off, revealing a large yellow dog with one eye and more bandages than Clint himself usually sported after missions.

_ Dog? _ Phil asked with his face, turning to Clint. When the hell had Clint gotten a dog? It wasn’t a young dog, either, suggesting Clint had maybe had it for years. He hadn’t thought Clint was all  _ that _ private with his private life, but maybe….

“Yeah, that’s Arrow,” Clint said, trying in vain to hold back laughter. “Or that’s what his collar said, anyway. I dunno, if he’s staying, he’s gonna need a new name. Nat’d raz me hard if I had a dog named that. I was thinking Lucky, maybe?”

“Lucky,” Phil repeated, looking back at the dog.

The dog huffed at him and muttered. Phil didn’t blame him.

“Yeah well, that’s what the vet said. He’s a stray that’s been hanging around. I fed him a couple times. Got hit by a car a week or so back and I took him to get patched up; picked him up from the vet when I got back from Kerala. So I dunno what to do with him. Be hard to keep him, what with my mission schedule, but I don’t wanna take him to the pound either. Been wondering whether someone in the building’d maybe want him.”

“Or maybe you could keep him and someone in the building would dog-sit while you’re gone?” Phil asked, reaching a tentative hand out for Lucky-- and he was going to be Lucky, it was already obvious-- to sniff. He’d never have said he was a dog person, but  _ Clint _ definitely was, and so over the years and the Delta missions, Phil’d of necessity gotten used to random animals. It was far from the first time he’d found Clint feeding a stray, or sneaking into a safehouse with an abandoned puppy under his hoodie-- or holding a pregnant cat in his lap in the back of a quinjet as they bugged out of Breckenridge, for that matter.

Lucky sniffed his hand, narrowed his remaining eye, then dismissed Phil entirely, getting off the couch to limp over to Clint and rub against him with a wide grin.

Phil took advantage of this to slump into the corner, letting the warmth of the dog’s lingering body heat seep into his skin. Clint’s raspy laughter was starting to seep into the drained, inflamed parts of his gut, and exhaustion was following quickly as the tension eased.

“So. What was worse?” Clint asked, just when Phil had closed his eyes.

“Worse? Oh. Yeah, building security overreacted completely and put it on lockdown. Sent out this emergency message over the speakers telling everyone to take cover and all.”

“They  _ what?” _ Clint hissed. “And they didn’t-- what?” 

“They didn’t tell us a damn thing for about twenty minutes,” Phil continued, the words starting to come harder. He’d come over despite his exhaustion in part to try and salvage whatever he’d gained that afternoon with Clint, but also in part to have someone to talk to about it. He knew he had to get it out before it turned to acid in his gut. But now, welcome and warm, he found he didn’t really want to relive it all just yet. “We barricaded the conference room, calmed the civilians down, looked for-- we’d had to leave our service weapons at reception, unfortunately.”

“We?” Clint’s voice was coming closer, and the couch sagged next to Phil’s hip. He must be kneeling next to the couch; Phil reached out a hand and found his own caught, enfolded. Safe.

“Representative from the Air Force was there, too. A Colonel Rhodes. Never met him before. Good man. Got a lunch date-- uh, lunch, not date-- with him next week.”

“Ah, bonding through shared trauma.”

“It’s been that kind of day,” Phil sighed, opening his eyes to find Clint grinning at him fondly. It made him look absurdly young. He hadn’t even known that expression could exist on Clint before this afternoon, so why did it ease his heart like he’d been missing it for years? “Already did it once this afternoon.”

Clint mock-glared at Phil.

“Just don’t go getting any ideas about dating this Colonel, mister.”

“Well, he  _ is _ pretty good looking,” Phil started, careful to make sure Clint could see the teasing in his eyes and feeling more of his heart crack open. “But no, no I think not. Once is more than enough for me.” 

You’re _ more than enough for me _ , is what he really thought, and what his eyes probably said. 

“Anyway, I can’t even manage to keep  _ one _ date,” Phil hurried on, to cover, because his heart was moving a little faster than he was comfortable with. “Can’t imagine trying to date  _ more _ people. Am I smelling food?”

“You are,” Clint told him, his voice warm and nearly shaky, like maybe Phil hadn’t managed to pull the wool over his eyes. “When I got your not at  _ all _ concerning text-- which, if you were doing that from lockdown, Phil, we’re gonna talk later about safety-- I figured you probably would end up pulling some bullshit like being so concerned about our date that you came over without remembering to eat. Am I right?”

“Um. Maybe,” Phil hedged. Well he  _ had  _ said, that afternoon, that Clint always knew what he was going for. Whether he wanted Clint to or not, apparently. “I did manage to grab a banana on the way over?”

“Where’d you find a banana?”

“Not actually sure.” His evening had been kind of a blur, after the all-clear had finally sounded and he and Rhodey had removed the thicket of conference room chairs they’d used to bar the door. The come-down off the adrenaline rush had hit him harder than he’d expected, especially for a situation where he’d never been in real danger at all. Maybe it’d just been the capper to an already crappy week. 

Clint’s expression turned dissatisfied.

“Yeah that’s not dinner. Come on, sit up. I’ll bring stuff over rather than try and get you to the counter.”

“What’s food?” Phil asked, pushing himself up to sitting. Lucky slipped into the space he’d left, clearly set on stealing the warm spot back.

“La Corvina,” Clint said. Phil could only see his back, but he could tell from the warmth in his voice that he was smug. “Wasn’t gonna let a little thing like your epically bad luck this week get in the way of our date. The plantains got a little soggy, so I stuck ‘em in the oven. Think they’ve crisped back up.”

It was odd. This morning, Phil would have said he knew just about everything  _ to  _ know about Clint-- apart from where he went when everyone thought he was in the vents. And how he was going to go about closing the unwelcome distance that had started to creep between them as their professional paths diverged.

He’d been wrong, he realized now. There was so much more to learn about Clint, and every bit of it so far delightful. If it had taken the single most stupid, useless, aggravating week of his career to end up here, well maybe it was actually worth it.

"You are a wonder,” he told Clint, giving up for the moment on holding back his fondness.

Clint stopped, turned, and rapidly reversed course, smugness quickly turning into something softer and wider on his face. 

“Yes I am,” he agreed, leaning over to give Phil a lingering kiss on his forehead. It sent electricity singing through Phil’s nerves, sparking all the way to his toes. Lips still close to Phil’s skin, Clint murmured, “And don’t you forget it.”

Then he danced back before Phil could pull him in for a more thorough kiss. Something that would involve  _ both _ their lips.

“ _ After _ dinner,” Clint told him. “Food first, then you can do anything you want with me. Well-- anything you can stay awake for.”

\---

As it turned out, Phil couldn’t stay awake for much after dinner beyond a short shuffling trip to Clint’s bedroom, where he passed out next to Lucky in the bed. He woke up once during the night, bladder pressing, to find he’d been stripped to his underwear and the dog had draped itself over his feet. 

But in the morning Phil finally got his long-delayed kiss, rolling Clint over into the sheets painted pink and gold with sunrise and locking their lips together through their laughter. Pressing down as Clint’s arms tightened around him, feeling happier and looser and somehow expansive as Clint opened his lips so Phil could deepen the kiss. 

Then Clint pulled back, pursing his lips and shaking his head, eyes crinkled in amusement. Phil tried to chase him, only to be pushed away.

“I’m sorry, Phil, no. Your morning breath is  _ terrible _ . I can’t.”

Phil dropped his head to Clint’s shoulder and let himself grin into Clint’s broad and  _ definitely _ not-air vent-compatible collarbone. 

“Yeah all right. Got a spare toothbrush?”

“For you? Anything,” Clint said.

As they both got up to begin the day, Clint’s words lingered in Phil’s ears. He was beginning to think that was quite literally true, that Clint would do anything for him. It was a heady thought, but also a little worrying around the edges. Phil was going to have to plan this out very carefully, do everything he could to be worthy of that kind of trust. 

(Possibly Natasha could help him with that-- which reminded him that he still had to solve his Natasha problem, and he really  _ couldn’t _ use the same solution Clint had with him. Well, he couldn’t use the orgasms part. But he’d always appreciated the chance to just sit and talk with  _ her _ , too. She was sharp and quick, and always knew how to call him on his shit without ever seeming cruel. He had always tried to do the same for her. So maybe lunch, not a date. Or… maybe brunch? Which was like lunch only better because there was breakfast food? Maybe even a  _ standing _ brunch? Should he text her? He should probably text her. He texted.)

Phil became so involved in plotting the course of his nascent relationship with Clint (and the incipient Natasha-brunches), that he barely even noticed the time and meetings passing until he finally ended up at the door to his own office that afternoon after the end of a two-hour divisional all-hands with Facilities he’d been forced to represent Fury at. He looked down at the doorknob under his hands and realized Clint would be inside, waiting for him. And then he smiled, turned the knob, and went in.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I love and adore all comments, and hold them close during trying times. You can also contact me on [ my tumblr](http://kat-har.tumblr.com/). I'm cool with concrit, too, via tumblr ask or chat.


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